


mistakes and jaffa cakes

by gunseldown



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Best Friends, Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 05:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20058835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunseldown/pseuds/gunseldown
Summary: German GP, after qualifying. Lando's down. Carlos picks him back up with his newfound knowledge of British snacks.





	mistakes and jaffa cakes

**Author's Note:**

> A silly short I wrote between some longer works.

Lando looked up from his knees at the knock on the door of his room in the McLaren motorhome. He shook his head - he still hadn’t taken off his race suit. “Yes?” he said tentatively. He really didn’t want to do any more media.

“Hey Lando, it’s me,” Carlos’ deep accented voice carried through the door. He sounded upbeat, cheerful. As if Lando needed another reminder that he’d fallen short compared to his teammate.

“What is it?” Lando said. He didn’t mean to sound gruff, but it came out sharper than he intended. He jumped to his feet and moved across to the door – it wasn’t far to go across the small room – and opened it.

“Ah,” Carlos said, grinning down at Lando. “Good. I have some yaffa cakes and some milk and I can’t finish them alone.” He held up a familiar blue and orange box of Jaffa cakes and a small carton of milk, and pushed his way into the small room past an astonished Lando.

“Jaffa cakes,” he said automatically. “J, like giraffe.” 

“Yaffa cakes!” Carlos said, setting the milk down on the small desk and ripping open the box. “It’s a good snack, no? You like them.”

Lando nodded. Carlos handed him a biscuit, then leaned up against the wall, facing Lando across the width of the small room.

“Thanks, Carlos,” Lando said, biting into the biscuit.

“You okay, cabrón?” Carlos asked, real concern in his voice. Lando cracked a weak grin.

“Yeah, fine, you know, just tired,” he said, but he could tell from the furrowed eyebrows on his teammate’s face that he wasn’t being very convincing.

“I know what ’just tired’ looks like,” Carlos said. He leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, and raised one eyebrow. “This is different.”

Lando sighed and slumped back to sit on the bed. “I just feel like I let the team down, you know,” he said, shrugging. “I know it was just a couple of tenths, and it’s the first time this year that I feel I’ve really let down the team. But I just feel rotten.”

He sighed again and finished the biscuit, and Carlos was immediately beside him, offering him the box. Lando grabbed another biscuit as Carlos placed his hand on his shoulder and looked down, his eyebrows coming together in a concerned frown.

“I thought you were being nice to me for once, letting me beat you in qualy,” he said, pouting in mock disappointment. Lando laughed a little with his mouth full of chocolate and orange biscuit, then began to cough at dry biscuit caught at the back of his throat. Carlos sat beside him, opened the carton of milk and offered it to him, firmly patting his back.

Lando cleared his throat with the milk and then wiped an incidental tear from his eye. “You know, this milk thing is getting out of hand.”

“What can you do? You are the meme lord,” Carlos said, and Lando couldn’t help but giggle at the way he said it. “Why!?” Carlos exclaimed. “Why do you always laugh when I say that? Meme lord. Meme lord?”

“The way you say meme! Since that video we did… I can’t get over it,” Lando said, this time wiping a tear of laughter from one of his eyes.

Carlos grinned at him, and offered him another biscuit. Lando waved it away as his face settled back into a slight scowl.

“I just wonder, you know, maybe I shouldn’t have done the Spa race. I could have spent that time preparing for qualy today,” he said, shaking his head. Again he dropped his elbows onto his knees and cradled his head. His lap, the little mistakes, kept replaying in his head.

“Chill, Lando. It took eleven races for you to have an off lap,” Carlos said. “You’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself because you can be so good. I know. But this is why the boss confirmed you last week, no? It is about more than one day or one lap. We’re building this team together.”

He gave Carlos a reassuring pat on the knee. Lando sighed again. “Thanks. But now I just feel like maybe I’ve been getting lucky. Beginner’s luck. I just couldn’t do it today, I don’t know why, it just didn’t come together,” Lando said.

Carlos gently grabbed Lando’s shoulders and pulled him upright, turning to face him straight on. 

“Cabrón, stop being a baby. Part of motorsport is picking yourself up. You make a mistake, you eat a yaffa cake, you keep pushing. Ah, I rhymed!” Carlos’s face lit up with a grin momentarily. “Mistake, cake… bake? Lake?”

Lando smirked and rolled his eyes dramatically. He grabbed the box of jaffa cakes from Carlos and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. 

“You know, I prefer chocolate oranges….”

**Author's Note:**

> Refers to the Carlos/Lando Snack Wars and Whisper Challenge videos and the 24h of Spa sim race Lando did with Max the weekend before the German GP.
> 
> Also I wrote this before learning that Lando actually would have made it to Q2 if not for a battery pack issue. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
